Summer - a time for pub lunches, walks by the canal, strawberries and cream, Wimbledon. For everyone else that is, as yours truly has suddenly found herself, newly returned from overseas adventures, and gainfully employed as a waitress at the local pub. So while everyone else sups on their pints, tucks in to their fish and chips and enjoys our uncharacteristically warm British summertime, I am running around clearing the glasses, stacking the plates high and remembering that yes, the customer is always right. Even if the customer is clearly wrong, an utter moron, and downright rude to boot.
My return from Canada was somewhat blighted by health concerns (now all resolved) and travel chaos galore, with Eyjafjallajökull chewing up my travel plans and spewing them out along with mile-wide clouds of ash. After 2 weeks of delays and with the BA hold music still ringing in my ears, I finally touched down on British soil and started the negotiations with 3 huge suitcases and the UK rail network. I have a knack of bumping into some real characters on trains, and this journey was no exception. My train companion on this particular stretch of rail was a lovely 84 year old lady with one ambition in life: to have every blank stretch of wall in the world covered with pictures of handsome young men! She had a particular fondness for Clark Gable and she thoroughly brightened my day. Thank you little old lady!
Since my return, I have been up and down the country on various errands and visits, but the best one of all had to be my 24 hours in St Andrews, as only a few people knew I was returning, and everyone's reactions at seeing me were priceless. My darling Sophs was rendered utterly speechless for a good few minutes, I thought she might actually faint, she looked as though she had seen a ghost. And for the next 24 hours she persisted in poking me at intervals to make sure I was actually real!
In between the wanderings, I spend my time doing shifts at the pub, chatting to the customers and having a surprising amount of fun for minimum wage and long hours. But in this economic climate, a job is a job. I'm lucky to have one at all, let alone one I enjoy. As with every summer, the plan is work, work, work to pay the university, only occasionally broken with things like next week's canal boat holiday around the Cheshire Ring. A whole week with nothing to do but drink tea and read books - heaven!
